The World Of Jantal: False Light

Prologue

   The hooded man walked through the marsh in the middle of the turbulent storm. The wind, like currents of the sea smashing wave after wave of rain against him. He trudges ever onwards through the thick marsh, boots almost completely submerged in the muddy water with each step. He shields his face from the storms onslaught with his rough, pale skinned, left hand, faintly glowing red lines tracing horizontally and vertically all across the skin. The sparse dead trees rock violently from left to right, a few ripping from the roots and flying away unseen in the chaotic storm. His only thoughts running between 'Damn storm' And 'where is it, where the hell is this damn grate.'

He eventually comes to a halt as he steps onto a stone construct in the shape of a circle just barely jutting out above the thick marsh waters, with mud and rubble covering most of it. He kneels down and whilst shielding his face with his left, uses his right hand covered in the same red markings, and clears off the layer of debre revealing a small circular rusted steel door. "Aha" he thinks to himself as he grabs the rusted door with his hand. Yanking hard, the old steel creaks loudly but doesn't budge, the noise drowned out by the destructive weather running amok all around him. "Damn door" the man thinks "I'll have to spare a bit of Sen." The markings on his right arm glows a bright deep red illuminating as he grasp the handle of the grate like door roughly and yanks, the door pried out with ease. As his arm stops glowing he slides his legs in and his feet touch the rings of a rusty ladder. As he ascends down he pulls the door above him over, sealing the storm on the other side of the entrance above him as he continues in the dark

"Finally out of the storm" he thinks to himself, letting out a small sigh of relief while pulling down his hood. "The relic hidden in this damned place must be pretty important if those condescending assholes are willing to pay so muc-" the bars his feet step on snap as he falls he grasp for a unbroken bar, only for it to snap as well. "DAMN" he shouts aloud as he falls down several meters. His face, and hands suddenly flare up with red energy coursing through the markings on his skin as he falls, empowering his whole body as he crashes against the stone floor with a loud thud.

The light from the markings going dim again, he groans out and rises up to his feet, reaching for a pouch on the inside of his heavy black coat. Rummaging around, he pulls out a small clear stone and a cylindrical steel tube with one end sealed shut. He then closes his hand around the stone and focuses for a moment, opening his hand to reveal a small stone, shaking his hand vigorously the stone burst alight in a golden red light. The stone walls curving all the way around as both wall and ceiling give an odd sense to the room, he turns around to be faced with a stone wall and a few rusty rungs of a ladder leading up to a small circular hole in the top of the arching stone tunnel- the way he came. "Time to find that damned shard or fragment of whatever the fuck they called it." He says aloud as he starts walking down the hallway, his every step sounding out through the whole of the cavern.

He finally comes to a halt in front of a massive wall of steel, with a giant vault like door with two different valves on both sides of the door. He puts the back of the steel tube in his mouth and reaches into his pouch and pulls out a notepad. After flipping through a few pages he finds the page he's looking for, making a noise of "mhmpfh", and putting up the notepad.

"Just gotta release the pressure inside the doors" he says before grasping the left valve and twisting it left with the markings lighting up extremely brightly, the rusty valve gives way easily. He walks over and does the same to the right valve, after which the markings calm down yet again. He then slides his hand across the middle of the smooth surface of the door, his fingers stopping at a small crevice in which was built to be pried open, and so he obliges. The markings along his body absolutely burst radiating with energy as he slowly pulls the door apart, both sides of the door frame slowly grinding apart on the complex mechanisms built for this. Letting out a loud grunt of effort, he pushes the heavy doors apart. He looks up in time to feel an extremely powerful punch connect with his face, sending him flying back rolling, flipping, and eventually grabbing the floor with his hands and planting his fleet in the floor, sliding on the stone floor, knocking him back for a total of around eighty yards. The man looks up just in time to see the faint illumination of the light he dropped as he was punched, get smashed out.

"Fucking hell..." the man says in annoyance, he stands up and the light from his markings burst alight, glowing brighter and brighter until the light envelopes him in a form of glowing armor, he reaches his left hand to the side and a majestic blade of twisting edges of violent red light surge and expand until it finishes twisting and pulsing about and settles in the form of a beautiful long double edged sword. This is his avatar, "The Knight", not a rare avatar among avatars, but he is one of the only people with it that can use it to its full potential so easily, making him one of the most powerful people in mercenary companies. Normally a normal person couldn't begin to even be able to access one, as being able to even unlock it takes absurd conditions. Much less can someone actually have and use one with any true amount of mastery. But this man was the exception to that exception, being able to use this powerful skill so well he needn't use his own elemental ability. He was no normal person.

He takes a stance holding his blade behind him and his arm before him, the light from his form illuminating the corridor fully, showing his assailant.

A fragmented shadow like creature in the shape of a man with extremely massive arms, the entirety of its being seemingly wreathing about in shadows, glinting pieces of metal sticking around randomly throughout the entirety of it slowly sliding across it's skin like a sharks fin on the surface of the sea. It's face blank as nothing but a black shape seeming as it's head suddenly splits in two showing three rows of jagged white teeth dripping the shadowy substance. A voidspawn, walking atrocity, creation of the fallen goddess of desire. These beings are one of the big reasons as to why the Dusklands are considered the leading problem in all of Jantal.

The Voidspawn roars, and several more disgusting black onyx colored figures peak themselves out from the looming darkness into the light. "Hope there aren't more" the man thinks to himself as he charges forward enamored in his spiritual armor.

The closest creature swings it's grotesque arm at him in attempt to hit him, he simply catches the hand with his right hand and pulls down while driving his knee up, shattering off the arm, he then winds back and smacks the creature with the arm, snapping the monsters head to the side as it collapses, violently shaking and steaming, slowly fading away, he slashes through another's arm, mashing his shoulder against it's face as it attempts to bite down on him, the teeth not cracking the armor as he smashed the head against the wall, the cracks form together again as if never existing. 'Need to save on using Sen' he thinks to himself as he leans back, avoiding a strike from another Voidspawn and driving his crimson blade through it's head, he tears the blade out, violently swinging it and shearing off another creatures head. As the last of their corpses fade away he releases his avatar form and falls to his knee, breathing heavily at his use of Sen.

After a moment he reaches into his pouch and pulls out another tube and crystal, imbuing the crystal with Sen and placing it in the tube, he scans the corridor to make sure there are no more Voidspawn before he proceeds while rubbing the scar on his cheek.

After proceeding through the massive freshly unsealed doors, he moves the light left to right scanning the room, the room itself is huge in the shape of a circle and the walls arching in, the room itself almost a semi sphere. In the middle of the room lies a massive chest with many giant chains wrapped over it holding it down, crossing over the chest in a circular pattern three chains in total.

As he walks up to the chains he squats down, the markings glowing brightly as he rips the chains out from the sockets in the ground they were built in to. After ripping all of them put and tossing them to the side, he opens the chest and shines the light inside, revealing a small cleanly cut cube with markings similar to the ones on the man's body, these markings glowing any conceivable color seemingly all at once, the entire thing the size of half his palm. He pulls out a small lead container and picks up the cube and places it in the container before locking it and putting the container in his pouch.

Hearing an unnerving sound of a crackling sort of breathing, he spins around and finds himself faced with even more Voidspawn. Bursting with the violet red energy, the form of his avatar envelopes around him. The helm closing, the plating, the gauntlets, all superior to any sort of metal in any way, yet just a physical manifestation of his own Sen. The all to familiar blade forming in his hand, he charges the creatures while clad in his violent red Knight visage.